Читать книгу Murder Must Wait - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 7

A Strange Pair

Alone in the house, Bony brought a satin-covered cushion from the lounge to kneel on the hall floor and outline with chalk three sets of footprints: one made by a man and two by women.

Then he entered a second bedroom, but this was unfurnished, and he found in a linen cupboard the sheet he required and which he took to the front bedroom.

The golden shaft of sunlight had moved from the dead woman’s hand to beribbon the cream wickerwork of the cot; otherwise nothing was altered. He switched on the light and deliberately studied the body, noting its position and finding nothing helpful excepting confirmation that she had been struck when clear inside the door.

The woman would be about thirty. She had been pretty rather than beautiful, the most attractive feature being the chestnut hair. The eyes were blue. The feet from which he had removed the shoes were shapely and the legs long and well moulded. She was wearing a tailored suit of blue gaberdine. Thirty years only had she lived; robbed of thirty years of life she might have enjoyed. With relief, he spread the sheet over her.

Now it was shut away from his eyes but not from his mind. The position of the wound and the stain on the linoleum proved she had been killed by a blow to the top of her head. He estimated she was five feet ten inches tall, and therefore the slayer must be a tall man. She wore no hat that last night of her life, and this wasn’t remarkable in a town like Mitford in country like the Riverina in February.

The red-stained matted hair persisted in his memory, and he felt that hovering over the room and sprawled about him was an impalpable being with its lips pursed to direct an ice-cold breath upon the nape of his neck, its eyes unwinking like the eyes of the dead.

He gazed upon the infant’s cot, noting the covers turned back, the imprint of the little head upon the pillow. The baby-linen and satin-bound blankets were of good quality and a small chest of drawers was filled with costly baby-clothes. These tiny garments Bony examined with that look of naïve astonishment common to all virile males.

A framed picture of the child stood on the dressing-table, and a miniature copy hung above the head of the bed. The puckish face was encircled by a shawl, and the subject, no doubt, would be unrecognisable a few months hence by him or any other policeman. A woman might recognise it. A woman would be able to tell a story from the cot, from the clothes in the chest, the clothes in the wardrobe, and from the things in the kitchen. A woman with experience in babies could perhaps tell a valuable story from the feeding bottle on the little table.

The wall behind the door might tell him a story. He removed the reading lamp attached to the head of the bed, to examine the wall behind the door, and the place immediately above where the murderer had stood to wait for his victim.

Yes, there was a story for him, but he had to bring a chair to stand on to read it. Not quickly did he distinguish the faint smear on the cream calsomine, a smear caused almost certainly by oil, the killer’s hair-oil transmitted to the wall from the back of his head. The height of the mark would give the man’s height in his shoes as over six feet. He could not detect any adhering hairs, but a magnifying glass might locate at least one.

He could hear the noise of a distant car, the shriek of a cockatoo, the shout of a boy. About him was the Silence and the Thing which kept its icy breath upon his neck. And as he stood on the chair, holding the lamp and peering at the blemish, there came a sound to make him jerk about to face the sheeted corpse. It came again, the impact of a blowfly upon the drawn blind, and somewhat hastily he stepped down from the chair, moved it to open the door, and backed from the room as though from the presence of royalty. It was royalty, too ... in the raiment of a winding sheet ... to this man of aboriginal maternity, the only king before whom he had to make obeisance.

Again in the hall, he remembered who and what he was and walked briskly to the kitchen to study the feeding bottle on the bench, and regard with puckered eyes the objects on the shelf above the bench and on that above the fuel stove. He spent time peering into cupboards, and left the scullery window to Essen, who would find that the ordinary slip catch had been opened, and eventually closed, with a knife.

There was washing on the line in the rear yard terminated by a high board fence. The yard was cemented, and he could have reached the front of the house by following the cement path. The washing on the line was brittle dry and stained with Murray Valley dust: it, too, might tell a story to an intelligent woman. A woman would have been helpful ... say, Marie, his wife who ruled his home at Banyo, out of Brisbane, and his heart no matter where he was.

When Essen came with his camera and other gear, Bony left the house in his charge with orders to leave everything exactly as it was. On the porch he asked the constable his name, said he would leave the door ajar in case Essen wanted assistance, and, putting on the grey velour, stepped into the sunglare.

The westering sun was the inescapable god ruling this land of the River Murray. The people never gazed upon it, for it was not to be looked at, being all about them, touching them from the heated ground, from every near-by object, from the cobalt sky. The shadows had no meaning, were merely rifts in the prevailing golden glare.

The few remaining rubbernecks went unnoticed, and not one could have named the colour of his eyes, so masked were they in the presence of the god. They waited for something to happen, and Bony was seated in the Thrings’ front room when the undertaker’s van came and parked outside No 5.

In the front room of No 7, Bony could not avoid dislike of Mrs Thring, who was lean and hawkish and, metaphorically, asking to be murdered by her patient husband. She said it was ten minutes after eight on the Monday evening that Mrs Rockcliff left her house. She was watering her flowers in the gathering dusk and saw Mrs Rockcliff open her front gate and pass to the street. She was not wearing a hat, and she was not carrying her baby. No, she didn’t have a pram for the child. Yes, she went out quite often at night ... in fact, it was mostly at night. She couldn’t have been up to any good.

“Aw, steady on!” complained her husband. “No doubt Mrs Rockcliff went to the pictures or a dance or to see friends. Nothing against that.”

“Suppose not, if you don’t take into account that she never had any friends calling on her. Even the Methodist parson gave up calling,” opposed the wife, a disfiguring sneer writhing on her thin lips. “But she did leave the child alone in the house ... like a canary in a cage with a cloth round it. I heard it crying once when she was gallivanting about, and when I told her about it she as good as told me to mind my own business.”

“She didn’t actually neglect the child, did she?”

“No, not in other ways,” replied Mrs Thring. “It was clean enough,” she went on with a sniff.

“And you have the impression that Mrs Rockcliff had no friends?”

“That’s what I think. And further, Inspector, I’ve always thought she didn’t have a husband, either.”

“Might have been a widow,” soothed Mr Thring.

“Never told me, if she was. She lived too quiet, if you ask me. Not natural for a young woman like her. She must have spent most of the daylight hours reading. I’ve seen her taking armfuls of books to change at the Municipal Library. D’you think the child was kidnapped, Inspector? Like those others?”

“Too early to decide,” countered Bony. “Mrs Rockcliff could have taken the baby out in the afternoon, and left it with an acquaintance ... perhaps at the hospital. We’ll find out.”

“She didn’t leave it anywhere but in the house,” declared Mrs Thring. “She went out at ten past eight, as I told you. At half past seven she took the baby in from the crib on the front veranda. It was in the house all right when she went out that night.”

Bony stood, saying:

“I am glad we are able to establish that, Mrs Thring. Tell me, did you notice what Mrs Rockcliff was wearing?”

“Yes. She was wearing her blue suit. I’m not positive, mind you, but I think she was carrying her library books.”

“Quite so. Mr Thring, you stood in the hall when Constable Essen entered the bedroom. Can you recall if the bedroom light was on?”

“No, Inspector. Constable Essen switched it on.”

“You then crossed the hall to stand just behind Constable Essen, who stood in the bedroom doorway. Can you recall if the blinds were drawn or not?”

“They were drawn,” Thring replied without hesitation.

“It would appear that Mrs Rockcliff drew the blinds before she left the house that evening,” Bony persisted. “It was then ten minutes past eight and it wasn’t dark enough to warrant switching on the light and lowering the blinds. She didn’t lower the lounge blinds before leaving. When previously she left the baby alone in the house at night, did she draw the blinds?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Mrs Thring. “And the light on, too.”

“H’m! A point having perhaps no importance,” Bony purred.

“I think she left the light on when she went out to give people the idea she was in,” said Mrs Thring. “It looks like that to me. Not putting on the light this last time seems to hint she thought she wouldn’t be away more than half an hour. What time was it she was murdered, do you know?”

Bony warded her probing questions. Thring accompanied him to the front gate, where he apologised for his wife, who, he said, suffered from an ulcer.

The rubbernecks had gone, and a constable strange to Bony sat on a chair before the door of No 5. Bony, once again conscious of the sun-god, passed along the street of these middle-class homes to arrive at another street which would take him to Main Street. Here the houses were larger and the gardens more spacious. The still air imprisoned the odours of tar and of street dust, the scent of roses and the tang of grapes and peaches. Only such as he could have detected the fragrance of the vast untamed land beyond the extremities of the irrigation channels, the fragrance of the real, the eternal Australia where dwell, and will for ever, the spirits of the Ancient Aclhuringa.

He was wondering how he would react did Mr Thring confess to having sliced his wife’s throat with a table knife, when he became conscious of a voice containing nothing of gall and venom.

“Where do you come from?” demanded the voice.

Bony glanced to his left. The voice could have proceeded from the stout woman standing inside a wicket-gate into a thick hedge of lambertiana. She was shapeless in a sun frock, and from her wide shoulders a large straw sun hat was suspended by the ribbon about her neck. Her face was large and round. Her eyes were small and brown. At the corners of her mouth was a humorous quirk.

“Was there something?” asked Bony, who was an admirer of a famous radio comedian.

“Yes. Where do you come from? You’re not a River Murray contact. An oddity, yet true. A rarity, and yet not so rare. I find you most interesting. Where do you come from?”

“Madam, your interest is reciprocated,” Bony said, bowing slightly. “How much money have you in the bank?”

“What? ... Er ... Oh! I didn’t intend to be rude. Good education, eh! Good job, by your clothes.”

“Your continued interest, Madam, is still reciprocated. What is all this about? Who are you? What are you? How are you?”

The round and weathered face expanded into a smile. The large brown hands expressively gripped the points of the pickets. From behind her in the secluded garden a man said:

“Come here, dear. I wish to show you the pictures of bottle-trees in the Kimberleys. The magazine is very good this month.”

“A moment, Henry. I am confronted by a remarkable specimen not possibly belonging to the Murray Valley tribes.” To Bony: “Who am I? I am Mrs Marlo-Jones, Dip. Ed. What am I? A damned nuisance. How am I? Delighted to meet you. Come in and meet Professor Marlo-Jones. Chair of Anthropology, you know. Ex, or now retired.”

The gate was swung wide in invitation. When the invitation was wordlessly declined, the gate was swung shut. Behind this somewhat original woman appeared a giant of a man, a decided personage. Possibly seventy, he stood and acted as a man of forty. The grey eyes were young and full of light. Above the high, tanned forehead the thick hair was more dark than grey.

“Great Scott!” he said, loudly. “Good heavens! Where did you get it?”

Genuine curiosity kept Bony standing before these unusual people. He was startled that they could see him, know him as the branch he was from the maternal vine whose roots are deeper far than the deepest artesian bore in Australia.

“Lizbeth, you have offended this man,” rumbled the aged youth.

“Hope not, Henry. I want to be friends with him.”

“Of course, Lizbeth.” To Bony: “Please tell us who you are.”

“I am Napoleon Bonaparte,” conceded Bony.

“To repeat one of the questions you put to me, Mr Bonaparte, what are you?” asked the woman less belligerently.

“I am a detective.”

“You had to be,” she agreed. “Tracking would come naturally, like breathing. And your third question, I ask you. How are you?”

“Somewhat doubtful,” admitted Bony. “Since a moment or two ago. Now, if you will pardon me, I will attend to my own business.”

“Oh, don’t go yet,” urged the woman. “We’re quite sane, really.”

“I have never doubted that,” was the gravely uttered falsehood.

“Then do come in for a few minutes. I’ll make you a billy of tea, and I have some real brownie.”

Bony heard the car slide to a stop at the moment when he was undecided whether to be amused or angry by these persons’ persistent attitude of superiority. He saw the man look beyond him and gaily wave a hand to whoever opened the car door. Then he heard Sergeant Yoti say:

“Thought you’d like the car, sir.”

Amusedly Bony witnessed dawning astonishment in the woman’s eyes. The man said loudly:

“Please present us, Sergeant.”

Yoti regarded Bony, caught his slight nod of assent.

“Professor Marlo-Jones and Mrs Jones. Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, of the Queensland Police.”

Bony bowed. The Marlo-Joneses automatically copied him. They said nothing, and when they regained balance Bony was smiling.

“Strange pair, Sergeant,” remarked Bony when the car was moving.

“Harmless enough,” replied Yoti. “They say he’s a clever old bird, she does a lot of good at one thing and another.”

“A real Prof.?”

“Too right! Retired, of course. Lives here to be near the aboriginal settlement up-river. Writing a book about them. She teaches botany.”

Softy Bony laughed.

“Thought I was a new flower, I believe. Wanted me to stay for a billy of tea and a slice of brownie ... her idea of a smoko tea suitable for a half-caste.” The laughter ran before bitterness. “Guess to what I owe my self-respect, and my rank.”

“Haven’t a clue,” declined the now cautious Yoti.

“The facility with which I thumb my nose at superior people. Stop at the Post Office, please. I wish to telegraph a request to Superintendent Bolt, down in Melbourne.”